


You are Somebody

by sunkelles



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Brainwashing, Character Study, Child Soldiers, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:59:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5457344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunkelles/pseuds/sunkelles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are not people. You are units, soldiers, workers, simply bodies for the Order to use and throw away. That is your place. That is where you are meant to find your worth. </p>
<p>Without the Order you are nothing. With the Order you are still nothing, but you are a nothing with a purpose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are Somebody

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't intentionally write this with any pairings, but if you want to read it as either Finn/Rey or Finn/Poe I'm alright with that. 
> 
> This is just me getting my feelings about my baby Finn out there.

The captain does not remove his helmet as he paces elegantly before the group. It is composed of you and the other novices, future troopers.

"You are a select few," the captain tells you and the other children. You have heard this spiel before. You will become stormtroopers one day, and that will give your life purpose.  
"You are nothing now," he assures them, voice firm and harsh, "but you will become the First Order's soldiers and workers. Eventually, you might be worth something." His helmet is silver, and his right shoulder is red. This captain is high ranking, higher than you and the others can ever hope to rise. You were born to be troopers, and you will die troopers. There will be no change in social status for you.

You are a cog in the First Order's machine, an infinitesimal piece in the grand scheme of things. As the years go by the captains and generals do not let any of you forget this. You are not people. You are units, soldiers, workers, simply bodies for the Order to use and throw away. That is your place. That is where you are meant to find your worth. Without the Order you are nothing. With the Order you are still nothing, but you are a nothing with a purpose.

This is the way you grow up: training, learning, and listening as they put you down. This is your life, and it always will be. You do not find yourself caring that you will soon be a bloody splotch on the sand.

Your life is worth nothing to you or anyone else. Maybe your death will be different.

 

The other troopers complain sometimes. They gossip and they giggle, but you never risk it. The captains find these troopers, and they stun them until all of their giggles are gone. You are not brave enough to risk this.

You become a full fledged trooper. Eventually the commencement ceremony comes and they give you all your placements. They call you up in alphabetical/numerical order. Your identification number is near the front, and your turn comes quickly.

"FN-2187," Captain Nhu calls out. You step forward, and salute. You await your placement with baited breath.  
"Precinct 41, sanitation," she says disdainfully. The other troopers laugh, high and loud, hysterical almost. It does not matter if you clean toilets and take out garbage or if you wield a blaster on the front lines. You are not a person either way.

You suspect that the others will be punished harshly for this. They've acted out, responded like people, and the Order never lets that slide with its troopers. A good trooper does not have a will outside of the Order.

 

 

You work sanitation, and you do not complain as you clean toilets and trash chutes alike. You are a trooper, a worker, and the Order's workers do not complain if they do not wish to be reprogrammed.

You catch a glimpse of your face in the mirror sometimes. That happens sometimes, when you work in the bathrooms. You are not supposed to take off your helmet except to sleep, but sometimes it gets so hot that you can't stand it anymore. Precinct 41 is not heavily populated and sometimes you take off your helmet for ten minutes at a time. It is the riskiest thing that you have ever done. Every time that you see yourself in the mirror, you are still a little shocked.  
You have dark skin, dark eyes, and wiry hair. You had almost forgotten that the helmet is not a part of you. It is a lot easier to remember that, now that you know the shape of your true face.

Sometimes you take your helmet off just to look at yourself. It's risky, and it's vain, but it is reassuring. To see your face, to touch it. It reminds you that you are not actually a robot.

You are made of flesh and bone, but you are still not really a person. You are not delusional enough to forget that.

 

 

The Order needs more soldiers. They decide to pull all of the troopers in for combat duties. They can conscript poor civilians for their manual labor, but they don't trust anyone but troopers to be their foot soldiers. No one else has been trained the way that you have been.

You are on the front lines within a week.

 

 

Battle is confusing and terrifying. Everything happens at once. Blasters boom, children scream, and light bullets whiz by you.

A trooper falls in front of you, and reaches out to touch your helmet. Their hand is bloody, and you wonder, idly, if they have stained the white of your helmet. Then the life leaves them, and they lie dead on the sand. The bodies of enemies of the Order litter the ground, and the blood pools on the vibrant sand. You can smell the faint metallic scent of blood and the dirty smell of the sand in the air.

The carnage is overwhelming, earth-shattering. The captains spoke of battle as if it were something glorious and worthy of respect. As if they would face well-trained opponents that would put up a fight. These people are unarmed, and seemingly untrained. Many of them seem like children, like you once were. Scarred and confused, with nothing to comfort you but a blaster and the words of your captain that you would eventually be of service to the Order.

This is no battlefield; it's a slaughterhouse, and you can feel your stomach churning. Your throat burns like you swallowed acid. There is nothing glorious or good about this.

The other troopers find the man that they are looking for, and they drag him before Kylo Ren. You expect him to immediately spill whatever secrets he is harboring. There is no use standing up to the Order. There is no escape.

The man looks Kylo Ren in the face, and he refuses to talk. This rebel does not give his compliance. You have heard the rebellion spoken of in hushed tones, heard the legends of Luke Skywalker refusing to give into the dark side no matter what was thrown at him. He babbles and bullshits, and you realize he has no intention of giving in.

They order the troopers to shoot, but you just clutch your blaster. You are a trooper, but you don't think that you were built for war. Your stomach churns as the battle rages on, and you clutch your blaster and do not shoot. You hope no one notices.

They drag him into the ship, but he does not look fearful, only a bit resigned. This man is what true courage, what true resistance looks like. They drag him onto the ship, but he doesn't look afraid. He's undaunted by the First Order's might.

You don't understand how one person can be so fearless. You have been a terrified, mewling follower since you were born. You have never seen courage, but now that you have you think there's nothing else quite so radiant. This is what the captains meant when they spoke of glorious combat; they were referring to this man.

You wait behind in the ship, take off your helmet, try to breathe. It's too much. You know that it's forbidden for you to remove it without explicit orders to do so, but you feel as though you are suffocating.

"Put your helmet back on," Phasma orders. You slide it on, obediently. You were raised to follow orders, but you can feel a fire burning within you. You don't want to be obedient any more.

"I'm sorry," you apologize, mindlessly. You aren't sorry, but you don't want to be sent to reprogramming.

"Don't let it happen again," Captain Phasma orders coldly. You giggle nervously in your helmet. You won't, and you know this for a fact. You won't stick around long enough for that.

 

You are a nobody, a nothing, a cog in the First Order's machine. But this man, he is a somebody. You decide that saving him is worth risking your life for. You were always going to die, but this is on your own terms. You will die saving a somebody, and that almost makes you a person too.

Somehow you both make it out. You figure out how to shoot the blasters. The captains said that your aim wasn't worth shit, which is why they sent you to work sanitation to begin with. It almost feels gratifying to shoot them down.

"Do you have a name?" the man, Poe asks.  
"They never gave me one," you say, "they always called me FN-2187." It's hard to admit to this man, that you're not really a person. It seemed like he was looking at you like you were one.  
"I don't like that," Poe says, "I'm going to call you Finn, for FN." You grin like a mad man, and feel something warm flow through your veins. You feel like a person now that you have a name.  
"Yes," you say, "Finn. I like that." And you take the name as your own. You are Finn now, and you won't let anyone take that from you. You won't let anyone take your name.

The ship finally crashes, and you lose Poe. To be more honest, Poe dies. You don't want to think about that. You almost saved him. He made you feel like you were worth something, like a person, and now he is dead. You wonder if anyone will ever care about you again.

He was the first, and he might be the only one ever.

 

Jakku is hot. Jakku is blazing, and you can feel the sweat running down your back as you trudge through the sand. Your feet sink into it, disappearing as if they've been eaten.

You are burning alive in your armor, and you are no longer a stormtrooper. You are a free agent, and you shed your armor like the skin of a former life. You mournfully slide Poe's jacket on over your black clothing, and you keep walking. You are thirstier than you've ever been, and you know you have to find a village. Thirst in the desert is life or death. You rebelled against the Order and survived. You won't allow yourself to die because you can't find water.

 

 

You meet a girl, you find Poe's droid, and you steal another ship. It has been an eventful day. You hit it off with her, or at least you like to think that you do. Rey is amazing, and she seems to think that you are impressive. So you lie, and claim to be with the rebellion. You mold yourself into someone, even though you are nothing. Now you are nothing but a run-away trooper, a turncoat, but you don't care as long as Rey does not know.

You try to get out of the Galaxy, as far away from the Order as you possibly can. This doesn't happen. You watch the Order blow up planets before your eyes, and you realize you can never escape them. Your only hope is to find Rey, and to face them together. You are stronger with her around, stronger that you ever knew you could be. You run back as fast as your legs can carry you.

You don't find Rey. You find a battle, and you find Han Solo and Chewbacca.  
"I need a weapon," you say, frantically.  
"You've already got one," the famed smuggler says. You grasp the lightsaber and let the blade loose. You don't feel worthy of it. A lightsaber is a graceful weapon, a Jedi knight's weapon, and you still feel like nothing. But Rey is not nothing, Rey is everything, and you think of her as you slash.

You have to stay alive for her.

 

 

You watch Kylo Ren carry her to the ship, bridal style, and you can feel something inside of you die. You couldn't save Rey.

You come to the Resistance headquarters, and you find out that Poe did not die. He entrusts you with his jacket, and you feel a weight lifted off your shoulders.

If Poe still lives, if you truly saved him then you can save Rey. This becomes your top priority, the most important thing in your world. You are a somebody, and you can save Rey.

 

 

You tell the Resistance everything they need to know, or at least every detail that you know that they need to know. Every moment that you spend doing that, you wish that you were trying to save Rey. You wanted to save Rey the moment that she went missing, but the Resistance does not value Rey the way that you do.

"I can disarm the shields," you promise giddly. The promise is a lie, but you're overjoyed by it. You're lying, you're able to lie, and that's an exhilarating experience. You will try your best to disable them, but saving Rey is your top priority. You think that it always will be.

 

 

The forest is dark, deep, and freezing. The snow coats the ground and the trees.

Rey is unconscious, and Han is dead. It is just you and Ren, and you can feel anger boiling in your veins. Kylo Ren shoved his lightsaber through Han Solo's chest, and he has already kidnapped Rey once. You won't let him do it again. You pick up the lightsaber, and extend the blade. You will not let Ren take Rey again. Rey is everything that is right in the world.

The blade still feels odd in your hands. Your hands were made for blasters and tools, not lightsabers. You are no Jedi knight, but you will fight this man to your dying breath. You will not give up this battle.

Kylo growls, and slashes at you. You block. The move isn't easy, and none of the rest of your saber maneuvers are either. You are clumsy with the blade, unfamiliar with a weapon as fluid and tailored for close combat as this. But you will not stop trying. You will not let him take Rey again. You are someone, somebody, and you will protect the person who matters the most in the world. Rey is somebody too.

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty rough. I tried to take some dialog from the movie but I honestly don't think I wrote it out right. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comments and kudos makes an author's day!!


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